Probe ties Europeans to the CIA

Fourteen countries may have helped U.S. to abduct suspected terrorists.

Fourteen countries may have helped U.S. to abduct suspected terrorists.

June 08, 2006|SEBASTIAN ROTELLA Los Angeles Times

PARIS -- Fourteen European countries appear to have helped the CIA operate a global "spider's web" of abductions, clandestine flights and secret detention facilities targeting suspected Islamic extremists, the head of a European inquiry alleged on Wednesday. Presenting the findings of an eight-month inquiry, Swiss Sen. Dick Marty accused European governments of collaborating with or accepting "systematic human rights violations" on their soil as teams of U.S. spies in black ski masks allegedly spirited suspects onto planes that flew them to grueling interrogations in countries including Morocco, Syria and Egypt. Marty singled out Romania and Poland, saying European government flight data and circumstantial evidence support accusations that they allowed secret CIA detention facilities to operate in their countries. But during a news conference here, Marty acknowledged that he did not have hard proof. His investigation was conducted for the Council of Europe, a regional human rights organization of governments with little formal power. The report was based largely on European prosecutions of suspected CIA abductions, reports by nongovernmental human rights organizations and news articles. "There is no formal evidence at this stage of the existence of secret CIA detention centers in Poland, Romania or other ... states, even though serious indications continue to exist and grow stronger," the report said. "Nevertheless, it is clear that an unspecified number of persons, deemed to be members or accomplices of terrorist movements, were arbitrarily and unlawfully arrested and/or detained and transported under the supervision of services acting in the name, or on behalf, of the American authorities." In response, leaders of several countries issued denials. "These are calumnies that are not based on any fact," said Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz. The Romanian government called Marty's conclusions "pure speculation." European governments officially distance themselves from cases in which suspects are taken to third countries for interrogation, either in Middle Eastern countries with weak human rights protections or U.S. detention centers for enemy combatants such as the facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At the same time, European law enforcement and spy services are accused of working with U.S. agents in several well-documented cases among nine detailed in Marty's 67-page report.